Every year, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) honors three outstanding social work efforts focused on curricular, conceptual and programmatic innovations in education for international social work.
This year, the CSWE Commission on Social Work Education has recognized the School of Social Work’s partnership with Cambodia’s Royal University of Phnom Penh as a distinguished recipient of its Partners in Advancing Education for International Social Work Award.
Says Tracy Harachi, social work professor and program director: “This is a great honor that recognizes the hard work of a number of social work colleagues and students in Cambodia—and here at the University. This partnership to help rebuild Cambodia’s educational capacity will have a significant impact in a country that has suffered unimaginable human and social devastation.”
Dr. Harachi initiated the partnership in response to a request by the Royal University in Phnom Penh (RUPP) in 2004 to create a degree program. In the first phase of the program, the UW-RUPP Partnership provided committed Cambodian social workers with graduate-level training so that they could return home and staff their university’s first social work department.
The School of Social Work continues to mentor the flourishing RUPP social work faculty, which graduated its first cohort in 2012 – highly skilled and motivated social work professionals ready to rebuild the human infrastructure of their war-torn country.
Find out more about the RUPP program and what you can do to help build human capacity for lasting social change in Cambodia.